Rhon­dor Dowlat

To avoid its name and im­age from be­ing brought in­to fur­ther pub­lic dis­re­pute the man­age­ment of Ma Paul Sports Club has dis­tanced it­self from Eng­lish-born coach Ter­ry Fen­wick.

Ac­cord­ing to a press re­lease yes­ter­day Ma Pau Sports Club states: "From re­cent re­ports in the press it would ap­pear Ma Pau has some­how un­wit­ting­ly be­come caught up in the im­broglio be­tween Ter­ry Fen­wick and oth­er per­sons un­con­nect­ed to Ma Pau and the Min­istry of Sport.

"Ma Pau wish­es to place on record that Ter­ry Fen­wick is not now nor has been the coach of Ma Pau SC. Mr Fen­wick sought to en­ter in­to an arrange­ment with Ma Pau to man­age the foot­ball team if it was elect­ed in­to the Pro League. The team was not and our arrange­ment with Mr Fen­wick end­ed."

The re­lease point­ed out that af­ter some time Ma Pau Sports Club ap­plied to the Pro League to be re­joined as a mem­ber.

It added at the same time Ter­ry Fen­wick ap­plied to the Min­istry of Sport for a reg­is­tra­tion grant ($450,000) to be paid in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate the club in re­join­ing the league and the grant was paid by the min­istry to fa­cil­i­tate the pay­ment of the reg­is­tra­tion fee.

How­ev­er, the re­lease added, it was sub­se­quent­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed to Ma Pau by the Pro League that its ap­pli­ca­tion was re­ject­ed by a vote of three against one with one ab­sten­tion.

In the cir­cum­stances, Ma Pau stat­ed, it im­me­di­ate­ly is­sued a $450,000 cheque to the min­istry, thus, in this re­gard Ma Pau stands en­tire­ly blame­less.

Ma Pau's re­lease al­so states the po­lice have shown its for­mer chair­man, Ken­roy Phillips, an ap­pli­ca­tion for $150,000.00 for the de­vel­op­ment of youth foot­ball.

Phillips, it stat­ed, had con­firmed to the po­lice that the sig­na­ture which pur­port­ed to be his on the ap­pli­ca­tion was not his.

Ma Pau added it had nev­er re­quest­ed such monies from the min­istry nor has it re­ceived such monies. The sit­u­a­tion re­gard­ing the $150,000, it stat­ed, was en­gag­ing the at­ten­tion of the po­lice.

This de­vel­op­ment has to do with Ma Pau FC seek­ing to re-en­ter the TT Pro League for the 2015/2016 sea­son. Ma Pau last played in the league in 2011 be­fore it re­quest­ed to have its ap­pli­ca­tion sus­pend­ed.

Sher­ry Per­sad of Ma Pau said: "Ma Pau is recog­nised as a well known leader in the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in the area of so­cial cor­po­rate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and has con­sis­tent­ly in­vest­ed in com­mu­ni­ties and in­di­vid­u­als but in no way at­tempt­ed to mis­in­form Gillian Mac­In­tyre, the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Sport, or the Pro League by stat­ing that Ma Pau had in­vest­ed $8.5 mil­lion in re­fur­bish­ing the Mor­vant recre­ation ground."

How­ev­er, Fen­wick seek­ing to clear the air on grant-fund­ing said, via a press re­lease is­sued on Sep­tem­ber 4, 2015, his ap­pli­ca­tion was spe­cif­ic to at­tain­ing the req­ui­site fee for in­cor­po­rat­ing the club in­to the 2015/2016 Pro League Sea­son.

He said he met with the then sports min­is­ter Brent San­cho and his ad­vis­er Kevin Har­ri­son on Ju­ly 21 and sub­se­quent­ly met with the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary on a num­ber of oc­ca­sions to fa­cil­i­tate com­pli­ance for grant fund­ing for Ma Pau FC's in­cor­po­ra­tion.

He added: "The in­cor­po­ra­tion was a nec­es­sary pre­req­ui­site by the own­ers of Ma Pau and its as­so­ci­at­ed spon­sors who have com­mit­ted to re­ha­bil­i­tate the Mor­vant Recre­ation­al Grounds to be used as home ground for Ma Pau and Cale­do­nia IA, in ad­di­tion to serv­ing mem­bers of the gen­er­al pub­lic.

"The cost of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion has been es­ti­mat­ed at just over TT$8 mil­lion and is to be pri­vate­ly fund­ed through spon­sor­ship. The fee for in­cor­po­ra­tion as doc­u­ment­ed in com­mu­ni­ca­tion was iden­ti­fied as $450,000."

He added that in ad­di­tion to the project plans and spon­sor­ship com­mit­ment, the club's own­ers sub­mit­ted doc­u­men­ta­tion from their bankers to es­tab­lish they were in good stand­ing, as well as for­mal ap­proval from the CEO of the San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Ken­wyn Pan­tin, of the cor­po­ra­tion's per­mis­sion to use the grounds un­der the agreed con­di­tions.

"Hav­ing ful­ly sat­is­fied all the cri­te­ria for grant fund­ing, Ma Pau FC was then is­sued a cheque, dat­ed Au­gust 8, by the Min­istry of Sport. At the same time, a let­ter of no­ti­fi­ca­tion, al­so dat­ed Au­gust 8, was sent to the CEO of the Pro­fes­sion­al Foot­ball League, Dex­ter Skeene, ad­vis­ing of the grant­i­ng of funds and the min­istry's sup­port," Fen­wick said.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Skeene said a board meet­ing was sched­uled for to­day and would on­ly dis­close that the rel­e­vant peo­ple would be con­tact­ed sub­se­quent to that meet­ing.

Skeene said there were ten teams in the T&T Pro League and added that no new teams would be brought in this week.